TV Stars
by bhut
Summary: In a world where (some) people can turn into animals, Grant and Skye try to become TV stars (against their will). It doesn't go as planned.
1. Chapter 1

**TV stars**

 _Disclaimer: all the characters belong to Marvel™, here._

 _Across the multiverse…_

"Greetings, everyone!" said the TV host. "We're in the southern U.S." – a wide-angle shot was cued – "where two types of water snake live. One is venomous, one is not. If your life depended on it, could you tell us which was which? Stick around to find out!"

Gaudy theme music was played. The camera's P.O.V. shifted away from the host, giving the audience a wide-angle shot of a cypress swamp, with sunlight cutting through the trees. The host moved with a visible purpose, looking for something.

"What are you looking for?" one of the host's crew asked, on cue, once again.

"Snakes," was the host's professional answer. "Now, most people try to avoid the snakes, but sometimes it can't be helped. What's more, sometimes non-venomous snakes resemble venomous ones, and are killed on sight. Today, we're trying to find one venomous snake and one non-venomous one, so we can show our viewers as to which snake is which." He got back onto his feet and began to walk through the swamp once more, (still staying on camera, of course). He walked around through the tangles of cypress roots, until he resolutely jumped forwards, with a cry – "It's a snake!" – and grabbed her by the tail.

Skye, or perhaps – Daisy, hated it.

 _Several hours earlier…_

The hacker known as Skye, Daisy, Mary-Sue (Poots) and a number of other names was sitting…not in her van, actually. Normally, she would be, doing her hacking, or activism, or even hacktivism, but right now, she was running low on cash, which meant that she needed more money not just for the above-mentioned activities, but for maintaining her van, too.

…Again, she normally acquired money by, well, hacking, (or activism, though not hacktivism, because she still hadn't figured out how to do that), but Miles did recommend these people, Skye-slash-Daisy needed the money, so why not try them? And so, here she was, away from the comforts and the (relative) safety of her van, waiting for her contacts to arrive – and then they did arrive, several murky characters that the young woman's gut immediately told that they shouldn't be trusted.

"So," the leader of the three spoke, as he and his compatriots shook hands with Skye, (or Daisy). "You're the unregistered shifter?"

That put everything into a perspective, immediately. Being a shifter was no crime exactly, but S.H.I.E.L.D. demanded that every person with the power to shift into animal would be registered, (ever since the Great Shifting Event that occurred many years before Skye was born), and Skye…she did not really want that, this really went against her spirit.

That said, this was all right and good, but Skye did not really want to go to high ground here. She just looked the spokesperson of the three right in the eye and said:

"I have no idea what you're talking about!"

"Then show us your registration and we'll go from there," came the reply, not entirely unexpected, so Skye just shook her head, said that this conversation was finished, and turned around to leave.

The dart with the revealing agent hit her from behind, and for the first time in many months, (if not several years – Skye is trying to find that silver lining here), she is unable to control her transformation, doesn't welcome it as the pavement rushes to meet her as she shifts into her other body – that of a snake.

It does not bother her exactly that her alter ego is a snake – most of the shifters are snakes, or frogs, or insects of some sort: there are other creatures, but they are rarer than the 'big three' mentioned above. Skye had made peace with that a long time ago, regardless of what she had told the nuns. Rather, what bothers her is that she is shanghaied for all purposes into the TV show, and even though the host and his cohorts _do_ promise that she will be paid, she still is not happy. What if S.H.I.E.L.D. finds her? Being registered by them would be the icing on the entire miserable cake, and anything else coming from them would be worse…

Of course, her tail, like some mundane reptile, was swinging around right now her and even though she had bit the host, it did not really matter – she was the nonvenomous snake here. Consequently, she just squirmed a bit, and even bit the host's thumb – if she is nonvenomous, let him suck on this – but did not do anything else, not even shift back. If S.H.I.E.L.D. was watching the show, she did not need to make this sort of a personal declaration…or revelation. Whatever.

As Skye, or Daisy, just hanged loosely in the grip of the show crew, the host moved on looking for the other snake, the venomous one. Skye genuinely wondered, just how they made the poor guy – or girl – go along with them. The shifters, whose alter ego did have venom, (or poison, she neither knew nor cared as to which was which), usually were not shy in regards to using it…

 _Several hours earlier…_

Grant Douglas Ward, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (and Hydra, though perhaps – to neither, not fully), sat there, listening to the proposition of starring – in his alternate form – on the nature TV show. Fury and the rest of the old guard generally did not like it when any of their 'special' agents – shifters or otherwise – would appear in public, (especially in their human guises), and so he could refuse, but still…

But still he did not. John was dying, all of their efforts, combined with Hydra's resources, only delayed the inevitable, and Ward could not do anything. As John had…'requested', (cough), he learned medicine, field medicine, (the advanced version), and he knew now enough, more than enough, to know that John was dying, and there was nothing that Grant could think of that could fix it.

And now there were these three idiots, making all sorts of noises and clamors regarding…what? A job on TV. Somehow, they knew that Grant's alter ego was a snake, and a venomous one as well – 'just what they needed it'. Some other poor soul would be the non-venomous reptile in this equation. Okay. Well, probably not for that other poor soul, but Grant was about done caring – he was failing John here, and somehow he couldn't do anything to make it right…and now he had to make 'the right choice' and refuse the offer? Especially since there was nothing about 'the right choice' that was official, that was direct and straight and pure and good… Grant was tired. He was possibly making the wrong choice here, the stupid choice – these three idiots did not have the slightest idea of how to handle shifters whose alter ego could _hurt_ you – but he did not care. Gifted agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. did not star on TV, Grant was so straight an S.H.I.E.L.D. agent that it hurt…, he wanted the hurt to ease, for however little or small, and so he agreed.

This was then, and now Ward was curled in his alternate form, waiting for the show's host to approach him with a hooked pole. Against a real snake, this would work fine, but against a Gifted human shifter? Whose human mind was combined with the strength and venom, of a large snake? This was something else, Ward could inflict plenty of damage on the new three stooges, for when the power of human thought is coupled with ill will and brute strength, anything is possible – and Ward had signed no paper, was here voluntarily, and could do whatever he wanted…and instead he complied, and not because compliance was rewarded, but because he didn't know why.

Well, no, he sort of did – these men did nothing to him, not unlike Christian and his friends, and one day, when John wasn't dying, there would be a reckoning, but for the moment, right now, Grant did what he was told to do – make a half-hearted escape, be handled around, albeit respectfully, show off his mouth, shake his tail, (though his snake-self wasn't a rattlesnake either), and then-

 _Now_

Skye never considered herself to be the kind of a young woman to lose her head to any man, especially while they _both_ were in their alternate shapes, though chemistry was actually made more powerful in an animal form, especially when the two animals matched, however poorly. The other poor soul in the equation here was of a male gender, and even as a snake, he was more powerful than just handsome – not that Skye cared. As far as she was concerned, the greatest power ever was freedom, though she would admit that there were plenty of other powers that mattered too. Well, she would not challenge that statement, but right now-

Right now Skye was, admittedly, not thinking about the philosophy, her childhood with nuns be damned more than ever. Rather, she was watching her counterpart, who just placidly did his part, even though he would rather not be here at all.

Oh sure, he was much more stable than Skye was, much less energetic, he just complied, but…firstly, even though Skye's knowledge of registration was faulty, she was sure that as a venomous entity, he would be registered and monitored by S.H.I.E.L.D., if not working for them; one misdemeanor, just one, and he would lose his shifting abilities for a long time, if not for ever; and being trapped in just one shape, when you actually have two, would suck. Skye just knew it, and did not criticize the other person while they were being filmed. Not that they could, because otherwise they would be revealed as shifters, and not as 'just' animals, which was another ball of messy.

She did 'musk' (that is what it called in snakes) on the host person's hand though, regardless of whether or not she was paid. (Or would be paid. Whatever). Being held next to her, um, 'venomous counterpart' made Skye feel kind of flighty and petite, and she did not want to appear that to him, not because she cared about how he felt about her, but because of reasons. Given how he stoically endured being handled somehow had lent gravity and solemnness to her, and so she did not repeat her 'musking' incident again – but no, it was not about the money.

/ / /

There was something odd about the girl, Grant mused. Possibly, she was supposed to be 'the other girl', but there was no 'other girl' here, just her, and Grant, and their hosts, all of whom were male as well. Bully! This made her 'just the girl', maybe, but there was no 'just' about her, she was – special. Grant did not know how, only that that she was.

She probably was not _John's_ type, even as a human, (and John's alter-ego wasn't a snake either), for John tended to go for big blondes – and not just in brothels, (mostly in Montreal, but John loved that city in and off itself, not just for its' women), but even when Whitehall began to push his own Hydra agenda, he got John with his Hydra counterpart, a rather robust and powerful woman named Catherine Hale, who actually was the Hydra mole in the U.S. Air Force – and she was blonde-haired as well.

So was their daughter, and John clearly doted on her – but he never discarded Ward either, for that Ward would move mountains to pay John back, but…this girl, the other shifter, (Grant being the first one), there was something special about her, Grant just couldn't figure out what. Consequently, then, he did what he usually did – he just put everything on hold and waited, thinking it over and watching… no, looking at her. Somehow, with her around, things were different, maybe even better…at least until the idiots holding onto them didn't shift their grips and exposed their bellies, something that all the shifters hate, so this time, the idiots received a dose of 'musk' from both of them. That was humiliating, even more so than the realization that _they_ were _being_ paid for this – but all things come to an end, and so Grant and the other – shifter got 'released into the wild', where they crawled off as snakes tend to do, and once off the cameras they hid and shifted back (at their designated spots), got dressed, removed all hints of being shifters, and went back to get their payments.

Nick Fury and some high level agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. were waiting for them.

/ / /

Nick Fury was not having a good time either, as both Grant and Skye could see: his only functional eye was glaring holes in them both. "Well?" he finally grouted out. "What can you say for yourselves?"

"Um, I'm not a part of your super-secret S.H.I.E.L.D. organisation, so can I just take my money and go?" Skye glared back.

"You have a permit?" Fury was not impressed. "If you don't, you want to hear the options?"

Skye backed down. She _did not_ have a permit, that was the issue, so she had to either a) lose one aspect of her self forever, b) actually get registered with S.H.I.E.L.D., or c) work for S.H.I.E.L.D. properly and fully and for real. None of the options really appealed to her, so she just kept quiet and waited for something else to come along.

For his own part, Fury seemed to be satisfied with Skye's new submissiveness, as he switched his attention back to Ward. "And you?" he said flatly. "What were _you_ thinking?"

"I've no idea," Ward admitted. "I just – went with the flow."

Ward wasn't lying, he was just bending the truth by not admitting that he was bending the rules here – he should've refused, or at least brought to their attention that he was an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. did bend the rules, but Grant Ward didn't, not regularly, and not in his S.H.I.E.L.D. persona. When John had him doing missions for Hydra it was different. Hydra wasn't better than S.H.I.E.L.D., in fact it had its own flaws, the biggest being that regardless of the Heads' denial all Hydra wanted was to hurt other people; everything else was secondary, really – but this wasn't the time nor the place to discuss it, and Fury wasn't the man to discuss it with either, so Grant just kept silent too.

"…What _am_ I to do with you – both of you?" Fury re-asked his question after it became obvious that neither of them would speak. Not surprisingly, more silence followed, and Fury got increasingly upset.

"Fine. Both of you – go to the containment unit for unruly shifters; Ward, take your new friend and show her the way."

Ward bit-off another argument: on one hand, he could not shake away the feeling that Fury knew…something about his double-life, but he did not care. He cared about John, but this was not about John right now, but about his new friend. Well, no, not a friend – Ward did not really have friends, but she was his new someone, so he cooperated and led her away. Not that she resisted much either.

As Fury looked at the retreating youngsters, something resembling both sadness and exhaustion at the same time diluted his anger. "What _am_ I going to do?" he asked no one in particular.

 _To be continued…_


	2. Chapter 2

**Part 2**

 _Disclaimer: see the first chapter._

Skye's first impression of the apparent containment unit, (or whatever), was not that overwhelmingly…anything. It was a room. It had all the creature comforts of the room, and the containment part came from the fact that it was strictly voluntary, you were here on your free will.

"The nerve!" she commented upon that, when she heard it from Grant. "This is just like those nuns! I hated it back there!"

"Hated what back when and where?" Grant blinked, (for all of his various qualities, he was unused to the finer twists and turns of the feminine logic, and it showed).

"At the orphanage," Skye elaborated, however reluctantly. "Apparently, I had a real skill with doing what was required – or requested – from a nun-in-training. I know that the two words are different, but I do not care about them equally. I didn't care about being a nun either, I don't care about anything – I just want to be free." She looked away. "Well, no, I don't care about _just_ that – I care about other things; I just really don't want to be a nun or to have anything to do with religion. You?"

"Yes," Ward agreed, remembering his own experiences with the military school: he _was_ harassed there at first, had been put into solitary detention at first, but proved himself to be good soon afterwards – truly and honestly good, as in competent only much more better, and then-

Then the letter arrived. From home. Ward was not stupid, he had realized by now that there was something off about its' arrival and content, but he did not care. The letter gave him an opening, a reason to escape the military school and the future that it offered him behind, and he did. He was prepared to pay the price, especially when he had failed to kill Christian or the rest of his family, but then John appeared and everything changed, and now John was dying and Grant didn't know what do, and-

And the new girl was staring at him, and those eyes were really lovely, and she was truly lovely in general, and Ward was enjoying this sight of her excessively much for this occasion, and was he making an idiot of himself-?

"Yes," Skye nodded, trying to sound…one way, but coming across as something else instead. "Why, don't have too much of a social life?" she was trying to sound arrogant, but was sounding as a mixture of concerned and incredulous.

"No," Grant admitted, sounding unhappy himself. "My S.O. … he's a good man, but he doesn't deal with women very well…" he kept mum about John's relationship with Catherine Hale and their Hydra-sponsored daughter a secret, though. "He passed it onto me…"

"You poor man," Skye tried to sound mocking, but did not quite succeed, not that she wanted to: after this mess she did not really want to be with Miles, but neither did she want to be alone – it sucked, almost as badly as growing up in an orphanage with little to no privacy had been. If this was a part of the parcel of being a self-sacrificing hero, a servant of the Lord and so forth, then she wanted no part of that parcel, period. She would rather be…probably not a villain, (she was not that sort of evil slash selfish), but…something-something.

"Something-something?" Grant raised an eyebrow. "That's unexpected. Want to elaborate?"

Skye did not, but then both her and Ward became distracted by a pair of new arrivals…

/ / /

 _Some time earlier…_

"Nick. What are you thinking?" Maria Hill, Fury's second-in-command of S.H.I.E.L.D. asked her friend and boss. "Since when are you trying to do an elaborate, subtle routine? If you think that Ward is hiding something, let us interrogate him for real. If he does, it will be revealed, if he doesn't, it will be revealed too, and we can let him go with apologies to both him and John Garrett: it won't be fun, it isn't exactly necessary, but it won't be fatal either." She paused. "Of course, if you _don't_ think that Ward is hiding something, let's just skip the interrogation and let him go, saving ourselves our own time and effort too."

Nick nodded, seemingly ignoring Maria's statements, (but Maria was not fooled). "Do you think it was a mistake getting involved with Pierce?" he asked instead. (Maria was not caught flat-footed here either).

"Yes," she replied in an equally direct tone of voice. "It was. I'm sure that he's a wonderful and charming man, but Phil Coulson's better…" she trailed away, shook away some mental cobwebs of her own, and changed her statement – somewhat. "Anyhow, what's this got to do with Ward and the girl?"

"I think that whatever Pierce has been spinning in our S.H.I.E.L.D., John's in on it, among other people," Fury said slowly. "I don't have too much to go on, other than Victoria Hand's info, and she has her own baggage." Hill frowned but did not interrupt her boss. "I believe that I have…half a plan regarding John Garrett – and _everyone_ else associated with him. I also believe that I will need help executing it, especially fully. Hill, are you in on it?"

"Yes!" Hill immediately replied – it was the first time ever in their relationship, professional or otherwise, that Fury requested something so important from her. "Shouldn't you be asking Phil Coulson about it, though?"

There was an awkward pause during which Maria refused to back down. "Well, he _has_ , um, recovered from the alien invasion of New York by now, right?" she dared a glare of her own. "You have said so yourself!"

"Yes I did," Nick admitted, "but… it's complex. I'm afraid that in saving Phil we've… gone _too_ ambitious and now Phil has made a… incomplete recovery, in all the wrong ways."

"…" Hill looked away. "Coulson's my friend," she said in a small voice. "If his… recovery has gone wrong… what can be done – about him?"

"We'll worry about this… now," Fury said firmly. "We're going… to multitask and to achieve several goals at the same time. On one hand, we will assess Coulson's new and recovered skill set – how he can manage a field team, at the very least. On the other-"

"Wait, wait," Hill decided to interrupt her boss. "But Ward, the girl and Phil Coulson don't exactly make a full, proper team. What if-"

"I know that," Fury said gruffly. "We're adding few other people to this… team."

"Anyone we know?"

Instead of replying, Fury turned on a TV screen in his office. "…Adventures with Cookie and Caramel" came on.

"…I don't see it," Hill wrinkled her nose as she observed the adventures of two different baby sloths in the wild. "Are they one, well two of us?"

"Yes," Fury said grumpily.

Maria just stared.

/ / /

 _Now…_

Skye stared at the new arrivals, and the latter stared at her…with an even greater caution than they did at Ward. "Hello," the girl of the new pair said carefully. "I'm Simmons. This is Fitz."

"This is Skye, and that's – Ward, I believe," Skye replied, feeling thoughtful: the other couple reminded her of someone, she just could not figure out just whom. "What are you two for?"

"…We could ask you the same thing," the other girl – Simmons, (agent Simmons?) replied, huffily.

"We're shifters," Skye decided to confess: Simmons and her friend appeared to be harmless, plus she was not in the right mood to lie unnecessarily. (Necessarily was another thing altogether). "And we got caught by Fury on TV at a wrong time."

"Or maybe a right time" Grant finally decided to join the conversation. "Fury seems to be working out on a plan, maybe you will help him?"

"That would be nice; that would be a great honor," the other newcomer – Fitz – said grouchily, "but no. We're actually here for the same reason – shifters that got caught by Fury on TV at a wrong time."

"Really? Who are you, then?" Skye asked, curiously.

The newcomers exchanged enigmatic looks, until finally reaching a conclusion of some sort. "I'm Cookie, and Fitz's Caramel," Simmons admitted, very unhappily.

Skye frowned. "Say what now? I know those names-"

"These are, like, two sloth superhero characters on TV," Grant groaned. "A friend of my S.O. think that they're adorable; there's even merchandise, see?" And he produced a poster, not too fancy, but still expensive by Skye's standards.

"Yes, this is us!" the girl – Simmons/Cookie exclaimed happily – well, almost. "Want our autographs? This is a basic poster, with autographs, its' value will go up!"

There was a pause, during which Grant and Skye exchanged a look: clearly, this _was not_ a regular S.H.I.E.L.D. attitude, even Skye could see that.

"Maybe we could rephrase this, or replay this, or something?" the other agent – Caramel/Fitz spoke, clearly trying to reset the last impression. "This isn't exactly us; usually we're more of an introvert genius type of S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy students, here."

"But your inner animal compensates for that," Grant grew thoughtful himself. "Well, with some help from the other people, I suppose. It could've been worse…"

"Yes, well, maybe it will be yet," Fitz admitted, still grumpy. "I mean, we _are_ only in the Academy, and we _have_ agent Weaver's permission, and technically, from a legal point of view-"

"Can we talk to you four now?" Fury interrupted Fitz's fledgling rant.

"Yes sir!" the agents in question replied as one, (including Skye).

 _To be continued…_


	3. Chapter 3

**Part 3**

 _Disclaimer: all of the characters here belong to Marvel™; no, really._

Silence came back with a vengeance, as the four young adults stared expectantly at Fury, with none of them willing to break the silence. "Well," Fury asked everyone, clearly not very pleased with the silence. "Are you in?"

Skye raised an eyebrow. Normally, she was not silent, but-

"Fine, let's start with you," Fury glared at her. "No, you're not an S.H.I.E.L.D. agent or in our registry," – Skye gave him a look of innocence that Fury didn't buy for a moment, - "but do you want to be?"

Skye made some generic mumbling noises that could be interpreted either way, (for she was that sort of a young woman, after all).

"That's what I thought," Fury nodded. "So you help us out, and we're even, okay?"

Skye looked away first. It wasn't that she was _against_ S.H.I.E.L.D. – she wasn't a bad person, after all, but…neither was she exactly _pro_ S.H.I.E.L.D. too: she would rather stay away from S.H.I.E.L.D. at all, but… you got to play the hand you've been dealt, sometimes, like now… so there was that.

"Glad to see that we're on the same page," Fury nodded, apparently reaching some internal conclusion of his own. "Agent Ward?"

The younger man looked at him, and there was no arrogance or superiority that was usually associated with him; if there'd been, then Fury would've followed Maria's advice and interrogated Ward promptly and directly as Maria had advised him: he hated arrogance in general, especially in the current generation of S.H.I.E.L.D. cadets, assets, and agents at the like – all too often it hid something else, something worse. But this time – there was none of that: Ward's gaze was truly bland, but Fury could see the misery behind this blandness, and that was something else. Fury did not like misery either and tended to do anything to make it go away. Again, perhaps a direct interrogation would be the best here, but Fury wanted to do it his way first – not because he was the director, (and Maria Hill was not), but… just because.

As the younger generation waited for his next statement, (or remark, or whatever), Fury's gaze shifted onto Skye: if Ward was miserable, (for whatever reason – Fury hoped it was because the younger man had a clue about what was going on in S.H.I.E.L.D. lately and didn't like it), then Skye was worried, if not scared: Fury didn't like this either: S.H.I.E.L.D. was supposed to helpful, not scary – where did it all go wrong?

"Sir?" the FitzSimmons spoke together, as they were known to do, (whenever they were not in their alter egos, that is). "Technically, we're only cadets ourselves-"

"Yes, and who else?" Fury shot them a look – a very stern one. "You two?" he pointed at the other couple. "Who are Cookie and Caramel, apparently?"

"Um, intrepid sloth heroes?"

"Some sort of rainforest goodwill ambassadors?"

"Yes, that," Fury nodded, his face inscrutable. "You two want to continue to do that?"

"Yes!" The FitzSimmons nodded immediately. "We _are_ doing something _important_ , after all! And it's not because of the free goat milk that we get to drink either!"

"…I'm sure that it washes away the taste of haggis," Fury said grouchily, causing Fitz to look up at the ceiling, red from embarrassment, while Simmons found something endlessly fascinating at the end of her shoe. "Does it mean that you're all on board?" The other four emphatically nodded. "Good, then we can get to the mission: I want you to help agent Coulson."

There was a natural pause as the others digested just what they have heard. "Why us?" the FitzSimmons asked quietly. "Agent Coulson… he's the director…well, the field director, he's, like, one of the most important agents in S.H.I.E.L.D. Why us? I thought that you two were friends?" A pause. " _We_ thought, not _I_!"

"I know," Fury nodded solemnly, "and Hill and I have helped Phil already, but now he needs some other people in his life."

"I heard that he had a significant other – a new significant other, but she was apparently 'the one'," Ward frowned. "Can't she help?"

"This is an S.H.I.E.L.D. matter, not a civilian matter – let's leave her out of it," Fury said grouchily – for personal reasons. "For now, anyhow."

"…There's a rumor that agent Coulson might have a child with her-"

"Let me and agent Hill worry about that either," Fury looked away. "The truth is, people, agent Hill and I have helped agent Coulson after his misadventure, but that is not enough. That is not the right sort of help. We need your help-"

"Okay, we're sold! Right, people?" Skye turned to the others. She was not sure as to why she had blurted it out, she just did.

Surprisingly, the others just nodded in agreement. However… "My S.O.-" Ward began.

"I know him, I was his mentor," Fury said curtly, "but John Garrett isn't going to be involved either-"

"Then it is just the four of us and agent Coulson?" Surprisingly, Ward still didn't back down…and judging from the facial expressions of the others, at least the FitzSimmons were interested in Fury's answer for practical reasons themselves…

"No," Fury made his decision. "Not only we'll be in touch – let me and Hill worry about this – I'm assigning a senior agent to your field team as well."

"Who is it?" the FitzSimmons leaned, excited – their first adult agent mission was proving to be a dozy already.

"Agent Melinda May…"

 _TBC…_


End file.
